Joomla Australia - Looking Ahead In 2020
- 24 March 2020
The impacts of COVID-19 on our economy and community have been significant. The situation is changing rapidly and the volume of information available can be overwhelming. Many people are now in lockdown, or working from home in circumstances that are very unfamiliar and stressful.
The Joomla community is a 100% volunteer, open-source community, and we extend our best wishes to the entire global Joomla community, and hope you and your families remain safe during this terrible time.
The Australian Joomla community is small but active. We hold monthly Joomla User Groups in Brisbane, Melbourne & Sydney which have been active for many years. Whilst we all regularly communicate online, we usually only get together once a year at our annual JoomlaDay Australia event.
Planning for JoomlaDay Australia 2020 in Melbourne was underway, but the current situation has caused us to re-evaluate, and we have made the sad but necessary decision to cancel the 2020 event. As a volunteer organisation, our event relies on sponsorship and ticket sales and we believe we are unlikely to gain sufficient sponsorship and ticket sales in the current climate leading up to October 2020, when the world is focussed on bigger issues.
Today we had one of our regular online meetings and made the following decisions:
- JoomlaDay Australia 2020 has been cancelled. We are all very sad. :(
- We’d booked a venue in Melbourne and started planning for October. At this stage, our plan is to re-book the same venue for the same weekend in Melbourne next year. Obviously this is subject to availability and world circumstances, but for now we are tentatively looking at holding JoomlaDay Australia 2021 on 9-10 October 2021. Save the date!
- A significant feature of JoomlaDay Australia 2019 was the Joomla Australia Site Awards. It is our intention to still hold this event, virtually, on Saturday 10 October 2020. More details to follow soon.
- We are obviously unable to offer our regular JUG meetings in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney, but we’ve decided to band together and instead hold a Joomla Australia Virtual JUG meeting, via Zoom, once per month. These meetings will:
- Be scheduled on the 3rd Tuesday of each month for at least the next 6 months, in all of Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney’s Meetup groups. If you are currently subscribed to these Meetup groups you will receive the usual Meetup notification. (To join a Meetup group, please click here). We will also share details on the JoomlaAu Forum.
- The first Joomla Australia Virtual JUG will be held on Tuesday 21 April 2020 at 6.00pm AEST.
- All Joomla Australia Virtual JUG sessions will be recorded and uploaded to our YouTube channel.
- Our goal is to line up a series of interesting speakers and offer regular JUG attendees something from “normal life” to do from home. If you are interested in presenting, please get in touch via the JoomlaAu Forum, Facebook or Twitter.
More details to follow soon.
- Be scheduled on the 3rd Tuesday of each month for at least the next 6 months, in all of Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney’s Meetup groups. If you are currently subscribed to these Meetup groups you will receive the usual Meetup notification. (To join a Meetup group, please click here). We will also share details on the JoomlaAu Forum.
There are also 2 global Joomla events scheduled for 2020 which may be of interest, and we will endeavour to participate and/or share where possible:
- The European Joomla and Beyond conference, which was recently cancelled, has announced they will be planning a 24 hour online #JAB20 on Saturday 30 May 2020 0:00UTC. A 24 hour event obviously allows Australians to participate.
- The global event Pizza Bugs and Fun is currently scheduled for 17 October 2020. In 2019, the Brisbane JUG were the first JUG in the world to kick off PBF (due to timezones). Remote access was also provided for those outside of Brisbane wishing to join in. If #PBF20 goes ahead, we will work on having Australia involved again.
That’s all for now! Please subscribe to the Joomla Australia newsletter to join our community and stay informed.
Nicky, Patrick, Nathan, Tim, Stuart & Shayne
(JoomlaAu JUG organisers / JoomlaDay Australia committee)
